Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of mobile-based financial transactions. More specifically, the present invention is related to a system, method and article of manufacture to facilitate a financial transaction at a business location without unlocking a mobile device.
Discussion of Related Art
It is well known in the art to utilize a mobile device, such as a cellular phone, to conduct financial transactions. As an example, a mobile device can be used to pay for financial transaction at a retail establishment. One such example is discussed below to note some of the problems associated with the prior art in conducting such financial transactions.
A retail establishment, e.g., ABC Coffee Shop, may have a software (may also be called an application or app) that a user is able to download on his/her mobile device. Once the software is downloaded and installed by the user of the mobile device, the user can then power up/open the mobile device, click on an icon representative of the software, and run the software on the mobile device, which may display, as part of the running software, a scannable barcode. Users are, therefore, able to use the software installed on the mobile device to conduct a transaction at the retail establishment, which in this example is the ABC Coffee Shop, by having someone at the retail establishment scan the barcode, which allows the user to purchase an item (or items) that he/she desires to buy.
A problem with this scenario is that the user has to go through numerous steps in order to access the software and pay for a purchase, which starts by unlocking the phone, finding the right page having the icon representative of the desired software, clicking on the icon for the desired software, navigating within the software to the appropriate location to load up the barcode that may be used for payment, and presenting the barcode to the retail establishment. This process is time consuming and is also error-prone.
This problem is further compounded for users with numerous software applications that are currently installed on their mobile device, which makes it even more difficult and time consuming to locate and run the software. One mechanism provided for in various mobile devices is the ability to search for a software among the list of installed software. But, even this approach requires the user to unlock the phone, type the first few characters of the software name (if the user can remember the name) and find an appropriate match in the results for the software corresponding to the retail establishment, i.e., the ABC Coffee Shop, run the software, and navigate within the software to the appropriate portion of the software that deals with conducting a transaction. This is even more time consuming than the scenario discussed previously and process is also error-prone.
Additionally, there is no non-intrusive way to authenticate the user as an authorized person to use the mobile device in such a financial transaction. The prior art provides intrusive mechanisms to verify a user's identity where, for example, a user may be asked to provide a pin code as an input prior to proceeding with a financial transaction.
Embodiments of the present invention are an improvement over prior art systems and methods.